


It's Been An Honor

by vashiane



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Mental Instability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 19:00:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7373671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vashiane/pseuds/vashiane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At least go out fighting, he reasons with himself, and with shaking hands he goes and checks his lion’s vitals. He pulls in as many deep breaths as he can, hoping to build his resolve back again. Go out fighting, Keith. Go out fighting.</p>
<p>It’s all he has left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Been An Honor

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be a very small drabble and it kind of... exploded? Uh?  
> Anyway, hi Voltron fandom, guess who's arrived! [/jazz hands]  
> Uh, please accept this gift and I sincerely apologize for my rustiness. ... And the content. I'm not always like this, I swear.

Desperation is what keeps Keith going, even when everything around him screams for him to stop.

Desperation and fear.

It might be all he has left.

He doesn’t know, because their mission took them in an unfamiliar part of space, thick with asteroids and debris from other spaceships that shattered themselves upon the rocks. They split up long ago -- Pidge and Shiro took starboard, Lance and Hunk port, and Keith through, trying to track the exact location of the signal through the interference from an incoming storm.

He doesn’t know, because their communications picked up static and wind gusts instead of his teammates’ voices, and the one time he could clearly hear one of them it was... It was Lance’s shrill scream, the crunching of metal and glass, a gurgling gasp -- and then nothing. Occasionally bits of pieces of audio broke through, but never more than a word or two.

And then static. Silence. There’s only the howls of a solar wind sweeping in his ears as he tries to steer his lion, keep it on course. Hunk was with Lance, Keith tells himself. They’ve got each other. They’ll be fine.

_They’ll be fine. They’ll be fine. They’ll be fine._

Keith pushes down on the handles, urging his lion forward through a newly open gap. He races past sheet metal and the remnants of a captain’s chair, and in the distance, he can make out the faint shape of Shiro’s black lion. The temptation to say _we can’t do this_ and beeline towards Shiro is strong, but his desire to finish the mission is just an edge stronger. By the time he’s battled himself enough to jerk his lion to the right, Shiro’s gone, and the radar finally coughs itself back to life to give him a reading.

Keith glances over in the direction where the reading is supposedly coming from, and lets his hands drop at his sides.

It’s a drilling ship -- a Galra drilling ship with an atypical color, one that almost blends into the sea of floating rocks. It’s a drilling ship, used for mining, yet customized from its usual design to be lighter. Faster. It’s a drilling ship turned into a warship, or a warship disguised as a drilling ship -- but either way. It’s a trap.

It’s a trap, and it’s heading right for him, and all he hears is static and panic and his own blood pounding in his ears.

Keith grabs the controls again and jumps to the right, the lion’s back legs skidding on the surface of a flatter asteroid. The ship barrels for him and Keith scurries to get away, trying to keep his head clear but so much and so little is going through his head. So many thoughts but so few of them make sense -- _turn this way, God are they dead, it’s coming, Pidge, it keeps coming and there’s guns, Lance?_

The two of them dash from asteroid to asteroid, erratically weaving in desperate attempts to avoid the laser blasts, the rocks, the drill. It would be easier to do with a clear head, but other than the fleeting glimpse of Shiro, he’s seen nothing of his team.

_They’re fine. They’re fine. They’re fine. They’re fine. They’re fine. They’re fine. They’re --_

In his haze, the drilling ship has caught up to him. It’s almost ready to strike, drill still slowly whirling and it’s slow enough that Keith’s eye can lock onto it. The drill is silver. Its tip is bright red and the red flies off into droplets that hang suspended in the air.

Keith’s brain works again quickly enough for him to dodge, barely, wincing at the scraping of metal against metal. He should move out of the way again but he’s _terrified,_ scared and staring into the face of the thing that might have hurt Lance as it grinds itself to a stop, to re-position and try again.

He needs to shake this thing off. He needs a plan. He needs… he needs to not be _alone_.

“Hey!” he calls out to everything. “Someone -- I don’t know if there’s more of these things! Tell me what’s going on!”

Static. Silence. Keith dodges a bolt from the drilling ship’s side gun by a hair and the lion crashes into a passing asteroid. His head’s ringing. Why is he alone.

“Come _on,_ ” he urges. He’s begging now, hands clenched so tight around the handles they ache. “Just tell me something!” The lion tips and red lights flash above his head, _warning, warning_ , and Keith is so sick of the color red.

"Someone answer me!" Keith screams - _why is there silence,_ why _is there silence_ \- "Please!"

All that answers him is static and the screaming of the drill as it pierces the front of his lion, the drill he didn’t see because he’d swiveled his head to look at a flashing message to turn it off. Because he can’t fix it right now and he’s _so sick_ of the color red.

The lion shudders, in his head he can hear its panic mingling in with his own but mentally, Keith’s at the end of his rope. What more can he do? The drill tears through the casing of his lion just like it tore through the glass and into Lance - it hurts but don’t _lie_ to yourself, Keith - and he’s left worse off than he was before, with nothing but static and silence echoing in his ears.

He doesn’t know if they’re still alive. He doesn’t know where they are. But his heart feels like it’s in pieces and his mind is shutting down, and Keith isn’t one to give up but they’ve been doing this for days, for weeks, for months - he doesn’t know!- and he can’t do it alone.

_At least go out fighting_ , he reasons with himself, and with shaking hands he goes and checks his lion’s vitals. He pulls in as many deep breaths as he can, hoping to build his resolve back again. Go out fighting, Keith. Go out fighting.

It’s all he has left.

So Keith moves into position, readies his laser to aim at the drilling ship as the drilling ship twists around a sudden asteroid to aim back at him. He takes those precious few moments to grip the controls, and address the team that can’t hear him.

“It’s been an honor,” he says to the static with a voice that quivers despite all his best efforts. “It’s been an honor flying with you boys.”

Keith knows nothing else but silence.


End file.
